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Isolationism, Internationalism And The “Other:” The Yellow Peril, Mad Brute And Red Menace In Early To Mid Twentieth Century Pulp Magazines And Comic Books, Nathan Vernon Madison

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis’ purpose is to demonstrate, via the examination of popular youth literature (primarily pulp magazines and comic books) from the 1920s through to the 1950s, that the stories found therein drew their definitions of heroism and villainy from an overarching, nativist fear of outsiders that had existed before the Great War, but intensified afterwards. These depictions were transferred to America’s “new” enemies following both the United States’ entry into the Second World War, as well as the early stages of the Cold War. This transference of nativist imagery left behind the ethnically-based origins of such depictions, showing that racism …